THE CRISIS OF THE WAR.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXXII, 7 October 1916, Page 5

THE CRISIS OF THE WAR.

NOW AT HAND

A GENERAL REVIEW

TYe reprint from Life, the Australian monthly paper, tiie following interesting summary: The culminating point of the war is at last reached. <;The decisive hour," as the French Premier said, '-is at hand." "What is certain," says Mr Lovat Fraser, in the Daily Mail, "is that the campaigns of this summer will impart, to the war a character and direction from which its final outcome may be determined. This is the year of fate." . . : " '

If we could get inside the mind cf, say, the German High Command, and see through its eyes what Germany has aimed at doing, but failed to do. no doubt we should begin to understand how bright is the. outlook for the Allies, and how dark for Germany . We cannot do; that; but it is possible to ctetect, and in some degree to measure, the change, silent, sudden, invisible, yet resistless as a Jaw of Nature, and —like a law of Nature —operating at every point—which is lowering &the whole warlike efficiency of theAustroGerman combination, and is the chief assurance of its defeat. An attempt to analyse this shrinkage of pow,er in our opponents, and to show its cause, is made by the military correspondent cf the Westminster Gazette, and its articles are the most illuminating bit of literature on the war which has appeared for many a day. The great feature of German tactics throughout the whole war is the use of the main strength of the German army in a "mass of shock." The principle is to hold the front "with, troops of the second grade, and organise at tiie centra a hitting force of supreme efficiency, concentrating in it the best human material and the greatest mass ©f artillery ■available, and to strike, with this force, as with, a hammer-head, at some vital point in the enemy's front. This is the supreme tactical formula of the German High Command. There are five great examples of "shock" v attack by Germany in the two years of the war: the thrust- at Paris, which was defeated at the Marne; the attempt to breiik the line at Ypres; the great stroke against Russia in 1915; the march into the Balkans; and, last of all, the attempt on Verdun. Here are five examples of what may be called "hammer-head strokes" against the enemy, and all failed—with, much injury to the "hammer-head" itself.

Meanwhile the front to be held has steadily widened; the prdssure of the Allies on every face has increased; so the German High Command has; at one and the same time, to 'meet two conflicting necessities —the necessity to increase the forces holding; the frontier, and to maintain—if possible to increase—the efficiency of the mobile attacking force at the centre. The system of trench defences was invented to make it possible for- a comparatively small' force to hold a wide frontier; but this'meant that an everincreasing proportion of the military strength of the Central Powers ceased to be mobile; they were anchored in the trenches they held. But a force imprisoned in a series of trenches is destroyed if the trenches themselves-. are broken by an efficient attacking force.

Here, then, were two, changes in operations at the same moment of time, and both adverse to Germany. The efficiency of its central striking foree —its "liammed-head" —was being reduced by sb many .failures, and by the slaughter which attended those failures; and the Scale of the immobilised forces required to hold the far-stretching frontiers against the Allies was steadily rising. Then came the blunder of'the long-sustained and bloody attempt to capture Verdun. Says the Westminsijer Gazette expert: "In the attack on that • place the Germans staked their mass of shock at a time when they had already had t« strain, their resources, in order to maintain it. And in the fignting around" Verdun the mass has been destroyed.' 5 The French computation of " the German losses at Verdun up to the end of May was ,415.000; another three months has passed since then, with a, loss of another 415,000. More significant than these losses is the fact that in the later attacks on Verdun, lads of the 1916-1917 classes took part, some of them'with only three months'training. The iron "hammer-head" of the German army, in other words, is to-day' largely made up of clay: "The striking force around Verdun now consists simply of remnants,-a fact-which shows that the ability to recruit and to re-form it no longer exists." Broadly, the position is this. The striking torce or. mass of shock has at length disappeared. The localised reserves, too, nave been heavily, drained. • In other words, the more efficient and mobile elements of the German army are those chiefly which have been lost. And it cannot be too strongly, insisted upon that this disappearance of the German -striking force as the outcome of Verdun is one of the profoundest and most searching events of the war. . . . There are ' still large enemy forces afoot, of course. They consist, however, more and more of the immobilised dregs, and they do not represent an efficiency proportionate to-: their numbers. During the last four months' the decline in the enemy's total military efficiency has been rapid. .

There is a clear connection, it maybe added, betwixt the German attack, wasteful and wrong-headed, on Verdun and -the completeness of the 'success with tfhich. Russia has shattered, one-half the Austro-German line in the East. . . . The Austrian invasion of the Trentino has to be classed with, the German attack on Verdun; k and, to quote the Westminster Gazette, "it ranks amongst the crudest blunders in the enemy's record." It proves, by the logic of <a terrible defeat, lw ao.c"rate is the diaemosis of the condition: •f^ the Central Powers here offered. They are assailed by two competing necessities —to maintain the strength, of the localised forces holding th€ frontiers, and to keep at the p>:mt of military efficiency the central and mobile hammer-head. The .Austrian disaster in- the Trentino, the German failure at Verdun, and the wreck of one-half the Eastern trenches axe proofs that the Central Powers are failing to meet the two supreme necessities of thsir position. There remains to be considered what, if we only knew them, were the plans of the German High Command for the snTvmer oanipaign of 1918; a^d, here again, the military correspondent cf the Westminster Gazette is a guide worth following. It is clear that, fcr the Germans, the -.margin of tine grows ever narrower. The pressure of the British blockade steadily increase, and- there threatens to be a gap betwixt the failure of the present sto 4;s of food in Germany and the ripen'ng of the harvest. The recruits of The 1917 class were required to be in "he fi-rhtinsc lino by May 1: and beyvati that the surrolv of recruits fails. (Germany has, therefore, the most urgent reason for bringing the wpr to an < iui by the 'nid-summer of 1916, a"d +v.-o great efforts —the attack on Verdun p.nd the offensive aerniust J*nly— •-•ere intended to accomplish this.* The-v would, it was hoped, compel both. France and Italy to make a separate peace; Great Britain and Russia then

could be dealt with separately. .The -third great offensive planned ; by the -German High Command, the Jxyfcland «ea-nght. also^failed., The Allies' have replied-' to the three Crerman offensives by the great Russian thrust on the' Eastern trenches, the Italian leap on Gprizia, and the Ivattle of the Somme in the West- The British victory off the coast of Jutland, meanwhile, re-asserted, and reinforced, that mastery of the sea which -is, the first essential of the whole strategy ' of. the Allies. Now \it is easy to see how fatal have been the three failures of the Central Powers during the present year. The sea-battle, off. Jutland practically made the blockade which has been strangling Germany impierceable. The waste of strength and loss of prestige which the Verdun adventure brought on- Germany has deadly and enduring effects. The Austrian; failure, with the consequent wreck of. her thfeesiarmies holding the southern half of tft|^ pastern trenches, Las brought Austria herself to the very edge of "ruin. Practically her sole reanaiaingl force is locked nip in theTientinb. A-madder scheme, could hardly Ibe imagined than that.on which Austria acted when s|te ; sent -her .best forces and an enormous weight of artillery into the Trentino , through the Brenner' Pass, the longest, narrowest, most difficult pass in the Rhetian Alps, and threaded by a single line of railway: The situation pf affairs at the present; moment is a fatal wound to the military. reputation of the^German High Command. At the moment when Kussia1 on the Eastern front and Great Britain began great, offensive movements, the best strength of Germany was held up at Verdun, and almost the entire effective military force of Austria, out-generalled and out-fought, is -practically interned in the Trentino. The British attack on the Somme, it may be added, affects the German defences on the Eastern front exactly as. Verdun .does, and does it in an equal degree. ":' Is is the skilful, deadly, sustained thrust of Sir Douglas Haig and of General Foeh on the Somme which holds 800,000 of the best surviving forces. Germany has, and which others wise might have been hurried eastward to check General Brusiloff.